By 
With D-Day (or ‘Dr Al Fahim Day’) approaching this week (or maybe next), I can’t help but daydream about what Portsmouth Football Club will be like five years from now.
If I allow this dream to take the form of hope rather than expectation, then I can see a long-term project that will allow the club to function properly for the first time in over half a century, the team gradually climbing the league and challenging for top honours, and continually improving attendance and facilities. In reality, the future may lie somewhere between this and the current state of affairs, but it is dreams that make football what it is, even in the modern world.
How lucky we would be to witness a team that rivals the double Championship winner of 1948-50. It seems appropriate to look back at this time and try to get a sense of what it was like, beginning with the 1948/49 campaign. Most of this information is taken from Colin Farmery’s excellent book, ‘Champions of England’.
Portsmouth’s FA Cup fifth round tie against Derby County at Fratton Park in February 1949 saw the club record attendance of 51,385. During this post-war period attendance at football matches soared, and this was illustrated in January 1948 when 81,962 turned up at Maine Road to watch Manchester United v Arsenal, Old Tafford was closed for renovation after damage from the war time bomb But attendances also fluctuated, Pompey’s local league gates typically covering the 20, 30 and 40 thousand brackets in a single season. At the time, it was necessary to get to Fratton Park by 1:00 pm if you wanted to get a good vantage point for the game, but people were queuing up shortly after breakfast on this particular day, and by 2:00 pm the doors were closed.
Gosport’s Cyril Lucas was working as a builder at the time and went to the match, which Pompey won 2–1, Ike Clarke scoring the winner. “Afterward it was pandemonium,” he recalls. ‘The whole crowd wanted to see Ike and I remember he couldn’t get out to see anyone because he was eating a sandwich! Eventually, because there were so many people milling about outside, he had to leave the ground through a back entrance. When Pompey won you were elated and we would walk back to the ferry replaying the game in our minds. However, if Pompey lost, I would get depressed until Wednesday.
Doesn’t sound much different to today, apart from the crowd of over 50,000 and the league title at the end of the season! But in those days, it was the FA Cup that really turned fans on. Pompey reached the semi-finals, and faced second division Leicester City, avoiding ‘big shots’ Wolves and Manchester United, who contested the other semi-final. It was going to be a formality. Pompey was surely on his way to double. However, they lost 3-1 at Highbury, proving that cup upsets are nothing new. The defeat meant supporter Peter Downton had to eat some humble pie. ‘A friend of mine in London was an Arsenal supporter and he came to the Jubilee game (the year before). To our delight, he was devastated by the result: he spent most of the match with his mouth open. He unfortunately managed to get a ticket to the semifinal and so he had his revenge. My friend’s smile returned and I was forced to drain my sorrows at Yates’ Winebar on the Strand, he recalled.
One of the best wins of the season was a thrashing of Wolves at Fratton Park on Easter Saturday. Pompey won 5-0 and, so soon after their 5-0 win at Newcastle (five headed goals!) ten days earlier, they were now the champions-elect. The title was sealed a week later at Bolton, and the promotion party at Fratton Park was against Huddersfield the following week. Apart from this, the game was notable for the fact that, due to a head injury, Jimmy Dickinson missed his first match. It may seem strange that the attendance was only 37,042 after the record high against Derby in the cup, matched by other Cup attendances in the 40,000s, but Fratton Park’s average attendance that season was 37,058. Perhaps it is not so unrealistic to suggest that the impending new regime could restore the club to its former glories?
Players claiming championship medals that season included Ernie Butler, Phil Rookes, Albert Ferrier, Jimmy Dickinson, Reg Flewin, Jimmy Scoular, Peter Harris, Bert Barlow, Duggie Reid, Len Phillips, and Jack Frogatt. Ike Clarke was also given special dispensation by the Football League to receive a medal, despite missing the 25-game qualifying mark, by one match. Despite the differences between then and now (the global nature of the game, player salaries, tactics, and equipment), we are still playing the same game after all. It would be nice to think that Portsmouth could build a Championship-winning team again, but for now I’d settle for the club getting on solid footing. If a wealthy foreign owner is currently the only way to achieve this, I’m all for it.